Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Leveling as a Prot Warrior

WARRIOR TIER 11 2 set bonus: Your taunt is never on cooldown because the boss is too busy laughing at you.

Leveling as a Prot Warrior is actually pretty fun......once you get past a certain level. I think 40 is when it starts getting better as that is when you pick up shield slam. Punching people in the face with a shield is the shit.

Before that, leveling as Prot is just as shitty as leveling as Fury or Arms. You have rage problems galore and not enough damage abilities. Heroic strike spamming is FTL.

Shield slam is really good, but where is really gets interesting is when you can pick up sword and board for juicy Shield Slam Procs.

I am not going to lay out an entire guide today as I am way too busy being delicious. I am just going to put out some rotations for prot warriors once they start to get into the magic levels (past 40).

Soloing: Questing is good. If you are just hitting Outland or Northrend, you will be picking up tons of upgrades. Your rotation is pretty much going to stay the same once you hit Outland. You are going to charge in (WARRRRBRIIINNGAAAAAAA) and shield slam them in the face. Hit revenge whenever it procs as it is very good damage as well as fairly low rage. I still run with the glyph of revenge for the free Heroic Strike after the revenge.

You will also want to spam devastate as much as you can. Not only does it hit pretty damn hard (critting for 1400+ for me as a 63 Warrior on my Horde toon), but it has a chance to proc Shield Slam if you are talented into Sword and Board.....and you better be.

If you are AOE grinding, depending on the number of mobs, you will work in Shockwave and Thunderclap in there. I would also use the glyph of cleave and make sure to cleave in all high rage situations.

Groups: Groups are easy. There is an AOE rotation and a single target rotation.

The AOE rotation for me is charge (once again WARRRBRINGAAAAAA) and Thunderclap. Back up a few steps and shockwave them. Remember that you will not be generating much rage for a few seconds as the mobs are stunned. When they are unstunned pop your shield block (nice AOE threat with damage shield). If you are drowning in rage feel free to spam cleave (once again, I glyph for cleave). While hitting Thunderclap every cooldown and spamming cleave, I like to hit shield slam and Devastate with every other available global cooldown. Remember not to use shockwave again if the mobs are going to be dying quickly. You want it to be available for the next group.

The single target rotation is simple. Charge in (or shoot if you dont like charging bosses) and shield slam them in the face. I then like to devastate spam for lots of Sword and Board procs and Heroic Strike when I am over 50 rage. If you are getting low on rage and revenge lights up, use it. Especially if you are glyphed for it.

Devastate was buffed to the point where some people are going to stop using Revenge entirely. Not I. I have a feeling that Revenge will be getting buffed before too long as well (I believe Ghost Crawler said as much). So, may as well keep it in your rotation for now (especially if you are talented and glyphed for it).

That concludes today's prot Warrior leveling guide. Get out there and shield slam some faces.

16 comments:

GC specifically said he'd buff revenge if it fell out of rotations, so keeping it in your rotation, you are contributing to the problem. Leave it on the bars, for low rage, but for threat/damage, atm, use deva/heroic/SS only.

The trick is we want him to buff revenge, so not using it seems to be the best way to do that, given what he's said in the blues.

During BC, when I played a Prot Warrior. I use to Duel Wield when I needed to grind out things, and the damage was not that bad. I don't know how it would play out today, and/or how it would be grinding levels

Demo shout is a very small amount of threat, usually not enough to gain aggro over the healer. On top of that, the threat from the shout is split between all the mobs it hits, so the more mobs you are trying to tank, the less effective the ability becomes. Back in Vanilla WoW this ability generated more threat, but it was patched and fixed.

Your rotation should be Charge > Tclap > Shockwave > then target each mob and either shield slam or devastate, keep Tclap on CD, and spam cleave if you have the rage for it, I'd say you want to be 60+ rage to be able to spam it.

@Darraxus: I meant that in a raiding sense, as did GC. It is my fault, however for taking that out of the context of your post, which is about leveling prot and not raiding. For that I apologize =(. But it still stands if you're raiding you shouldn't use revenge unless you are sub-12 rage on a boss fight, and talenting it would be useless outside of leveling or pvp builds.

@River:I dual-wielded if I was not tanking on a boss fight, and actually once we were in Tier 6 content I would dual wield on bosses in Karazahn, as it gave more TPS and I wasn't concerned with the crushing blows, since those bosses didn't hit that hard.

I have leveled my warrior from level 40 and is currently level 71, as prot. I found it much faster to level as prot then I was as fury or arms. Dread pretty much summed up my rotation. I do however use demo shout depending if my challenging shout is on CD, which really I do to "gather", rather for any way of trying to get more threat. For example I charge in use demo then thunderclap. That way the mobs are closer to me when I TC so I know im not missing any targets.

Thanks for that. I always get worried about holding aggro on groups but it seems I'm essentially doing the right thing. I'm glyphed for sunder and cleave becuase I know I'm going to be a horrible target switcher...working on that though! What is the value of demoralizing shout? Jus damage mitigation for the group or does it also contribute to aggro?

@ Eversor: It does cause a bit of threat, but it is VERY minimal. It will get you initial aggro if nobody is doing anything else, but if the healer heals or bubbles you (priest), they are going to head right at him. Its main use it to reduce the AP of the mobs.

Thanks. I had read conflicting reports on that and was wondering whether I should even bother throwing it in. Where does rend fall in terms of importance? I suppose I assumed as a dot, it may help maintain aggro. Thanks again.

heh. I'm loving my prot warrior. she's lvl 23 now and I already have sooo many buttons to push! and threat is not nearly as bad as I was afraid it was going to be.. (unlike my baby pally who has to hope and pray that consecrate and lolautoattack between judgments is enough)

sure rage can be a problem especially when running with 3 huntards with pvp pets who pull extra mobs before last batch is done (and when I have zero rage with bloodrage on CD >_> ), but soloing is nice and to be honest, I never even get to use heroic strike anymore.

basically when soloing, I thinderclap, rend and revenge (and cleave when its more then one mob), shield bashing if I feel like interrupting something. when tanking, I might add some sunders in there and a mocking blow for when someone gets trigger happy (I might taunt too, depends on situation)

I'm usually out of rage not because there's not enough abilities but rather because there's so much to use. it makes me sooo happy! I found myself doing the pally thing (especially if the healer can handle it) and pulling more mobs just to get more rage (I have a glyph of cleaving too, so I can very comfortably tank 4 mobs at a time)

not a single heirloom item either, just greens (some BS crafted, some BoE drops) with couple of dungeon blues.